Six Kids and a Full Time Job

Israel Must Keep Stanley Fisher on As Governor of the Bank of Israel

2009-11-23T23:39:00.003+02:00

Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fisher announced today that he would be raising interest rates by 0.25%. He is full of surprises. Just one week after Fisher announced that there was no real estate bubble in Israel despite the rising prices of real estate here, Fisher surprises the market with an anti-inflationary move. In fact, just yesterday, the Mintz firm in Israel suggested that interest rates would not rise much in 2010 (Link in Hebrew) and one day later, Fisher surprised with a 0.25% upward adjustment.

As I have written before, Fisher keeps 'em guessing in a brilliant fashion. He jumps in and buys dollars, easing the Shekel into higher value so that the exporters can get used to it. He raises interest rates when few are expecting it, attempting to keep inflation in check while still letting the economy expand with easier credit. Some would argue that the job of the central banker is to provide predictability and stability. However, I disagree. In these crazy times, caginess and targeted action is critical to keeping speculators on the sideline and keeping the economy in check. A reporter told me this evening that just after the Bank of Israel raised rates, the press team at the Bank of Israel was on the phone telling every reporter who would listen that this was a one time event. Brilliant! Fisher is using every tool at his disposal from interest rates, to buying foreign currency to effective PR. I bet Paul Krugman would love to have Stanley Fisher in place of Obama's economic team right now.

Which brings me to the next point: Fisher's term is up in May. He is using all of his weight to turn the Bank of Israel into the super regulator of the Israeli financial system. The Finance Ministry is pushing back. Fisher seems to have conditioned his return for a second term on this structural reform. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Steinitz would be wise to put the Treasury Bureaucrats in check and ensure that Fisher returns for a second term to help keep the Israeli economy out of the Global Great Recession. We need Governor Fisher back at the helm for another 5 years.

Israel's Design Problem

2009-11-22T11:08:00.003+02:00

The world of software, internet and services has changed rapidly over the last two years. We all know the buzzwords: Social, Cloud, Saas and Crowdsourcing to name a few. What I think has been lost in this tectonic shift is a fundamental change in how and why software and services are built and its potentially dire consequences for many legacy software companies and particularly for Israeli start ups and companies. Here is why:

Software has moved from being a technology challenge to a design challenge. Today, all software is like a consumer product. Even consumers sitting inside enterprises expect their "software" to be user friendly like their web services at home. Salesforce.com should be friendly, usable and simple like Youtube and Facebook. In fact, reducing features and functionality is more important than adding them in the world of cloud. Social design and flow is critical for enterprise apps as well. How you onramp your customers on your website needs to flow like uploading a video to Youtube or posting a blog.

In today's web world, first the product should be designed by a designer (or founder) who does some mockups of his/her vision (not an architect or a coding genius). Then you do some UI A/B testing; then you code it as rapidly as possible using the fastest and cheapest tools out there (read: Ruby and Rails and cloud hosting) and then you test the UI again. Only then do you work through the tech innovation. You see today's products are meant to serve a need, not wow a programmer or prove his complex genius. The user's aha! moment comes from how fast I solved MY specific need.

This is a radical change. Facebook has many designers (read: artistic folks with a flair and sense of design) on staff. Google thought long and hard about how they kept that home page simple. Designers are as critical today as ninja programmers were. If you are an entrepreneur without a design sense or vision in today's web and mobile world, you have a problem. Users give you 5 seconds after they have typed in your URL or downloaded your app from the appstore to decide if they want to stick with you. If the onramp to your SAAS or consumer web service is not dead simple and the value proposition not completely obvious, they will leave you immediately. This is a major change. You must, in Harvard economist Umair Haque's words, have "awesomeness."

Now, why are Israeli companies particularly challenged? Israeli companies have never been good at UI. See the dearth of consumer products coming out of Israel. How many Israeli software and web companies have you met that have designers on staff or on the payroll? You need a world class designer, not someone who has a few years on Photoshop. Another interesting indicator of this is the dearth of Rails programmers in Israel. You can't find them anywhere. Israel is still one giant .NET shop and we all know what Microsoft's design sense is like. It is why in this design-conscious, user friendly web world there are few if any Israeli mega hits in either consumer internet or SAAS. I am running into this issue in company after company that I am looking at.

Umair Haque (@umairh) says this well in the Awesomeness Manifesto and in Discussing how amazed he was with Prezi

"Insanely great stuff. What is innovative often fails to delight, inspire, and enlighten — because, as we've discussed, innovation is less concerned with raw creativity. Awesomeness puts creativity front and center. Awesome stuff evokes an emotive reaction because it's fundamentally new, unexpected, and 1000x better. Just ask Steve Jobs. The iPhone and iPod were pooh-poohed by analysts, who questioned how innovative they really were — but the Steve has turned multiple industries upside down through the power of awesomeness"

Think about awesomeness and the need for great, simple and amazing design. It is real!

The Best Way to Get Your Favorite Airline's Attention

2009-11-22T10:59:00.004+02:00

On Thursday, I was returning home from New York and my El Al flight was delayed out of JFK because the crew was stuck in traffic. In my frustration, I tweeted this out:

Well, I got El Al's attention. How do I know. I just got this email.

Gotta Love Twitter!

Smartest Man in Investing from Byron Wien

2009-11-11T09:57:00.002+02:00

I tried to find a link for this article so I could credit it and excerpt but I could not. Byron Wien seems to be an advisor at Blackstone today. The piece below It came from an investment professional I have a lot of respect for and I cut and pasted in entirety. Good read and conforms with much of what I think about the Market and economy.

Blackstone is pleased to offer the following Market Commentary by Byron Wien which shares his thinking on global economic developments, market insights and other factors that may influence investment opportunities and strategies. Learn more about Byron

The Smartest Man Sees Many Opportunities
November 2009

Several times a year, generally on more than one continent, I try to get together with the person I have come to think of as The Smartest Man in Europe. He earned that title in my mind over a period of more than twenty years by consistently identifying major shifts in geopolitical power, new investment themes and changes in the financial services industry. He correctly anticipated the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the economic fall of Japan, the rise of Eastern Europe, the end of communism in Russia and the growing economic importance of China and India. More recently he saw the dark clouds forming over the world financial markets. My 2007 essay about our early summer meeting had the title “The Smartest Man is Wearing Rain Gear” and in 2008 the essay was called “Overcoat Time for the Smartest Man.”

I have always been curious about how people with a special anticipatory intelligence got to be that way. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests it is a combination of when you were born, your support network and 10,000 hours of hard work. In the case of The Smartest Man, I think his ancestry has something to do with it. He is the descendant of a mercantile family whose roots go back to the operation of canteens selling food, weather protection and travel gear along the Silk Road hundreds of years ago. After his education, he arranged through Middle East contacts to be trained in New York at some of the leading investment banking firms. He returned to Europe to make his fortune as an investor and investment advisor as the continent recovered from the devastation of the Second World War. Although he is not a Rothschild, he is comfortable allocating his assets in real estate, art and financial instruments, as they did. Here are his thoughts, based on some conversations we had at the end of June, but confirmed with him prior to the publication of this essay.

The environment has changed dramatically since the summer of 2008. The demise of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, the merger of Merrill Lynch into Bank of America, the enormous investment by the U.S. government in American International Group and other financial institutions, and the automobile industry debacle and subsequent government involvement there have brought us to a new place in economic history. America is no longer free market capitalism at work and you cannot expect the economic vitality of the old days to return any time soon, if ever. We are in a serious period of reflation and assets will have to be allocated accordingly. Over the last two years I have been worried that the world was becoming too dependent on the continuous accumulation of debt at every level (from the consumer through the federal government), and that had to come to a bad end. That meant the stock market had to decline substantially and real estate prices had to fall from their debt-inflated levels. Consumer spending would drop sharply as a result and unemployment would rise everywhere. European countries and the United States would slide into recession.

In spite of all that has been done the policy moves have probably been insufficient. Both the government (through stimulus) and the Fed (through monetary expansion) have to do more. Some of those so called “green shoots” are turning brown. I wonder if the U.S. lawmakers realize that down the road, taxes are going to have to be raised and entitlements are going to have to be cut. That is the only way to bring the budget deficit back in line. It’s part of the dose of reality that America will have to taste. It will be politically unpopular but there will be no other choice. It will be a true test of leadership. I am also worried that the U.S. doesn’t realize that its dominant position in technology innovation is eroding and the government must do something to get it back on track since this area is part of the lifeblood of America. The only way to keep enough money flowing into the economic system so that the U.S. economy avoids slipping back into recession is for the Federal Reserve to become an agent of the government and thus lose its independence. Bernanke may resist this and if he does, Obama will have to replace him.

With so many people out of work, there is no wage pressure, so inflation stays low even though commodity prices may be rising. Oil continues to move higher because consumption in the Middle East, China and India keeps climbing and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cannot keep up with the rising demand. Their most productive wells are depleting about as fast as the world finds new sources of supply. China and India continue to grow at 5% or more even though the United States and Europe are in recessions and are importing fewer goods from Asia. China and India have 2.5 billion people, an expanding middle class, and the continuous need for improved infrastructure. As a result there will be further upward pressure on industrial commodity prices. I don’t have an opinion on agricultural commodities.

In time, after the recovery in the West picks up, there will be some wage pressure as well. The fact that so much money will be available will cause some increase in inflation, but I don’t expect to see anything like what we had in the 1970s when inflation surged past 10%. I think we will have 4% inflation and 2% real growth. That’s a nominal expansion of 6% and in that context earnings can improve and stock prices can do well. If I am wrong and inflation moves up beyond 6% to 7%, I believe that the U.S. government will institute wage and price controls. I know that seems unlikely now, but it will be part of facing up to the fact that we are in a new era. I know you are worried about the growth prospects for the United States once the stimulus is spent, but your country cannot afford to go back into recession, so if the economy weakens, I think we’ll have a second wave of stimulus. Basically I see the pattern of a “W” in the U.S. Stock prices will rise later this year, fall back sometime in 2010 and then rise again when the second stimulus-induced recovery phase becomes clear. I don’t see 10-year Treasury yields rising much above 4%. Rates higher than that would create too much of a problem for the housing industry. The Federal Reserve would step in with quantitative easing if rates got beyond 4%.

Life in America will continue to be good, but the standard of living may decline somewhat. That might not be a bad thing. I read where 35% of your people are overweight. Perhaps a period of hard times will force them to slim down. People may have to work harder and adjust their aspirations but America will still be a major economic power for a long time to come. It can no longer afford to be the police force for the world, to provide extensive foreign aid to countries everywhere and to spend so much on maintaining its military strength. The U.S. is hardly in a position to go around the world preaching about human rights. After what you did to Native Americans when you expanded your territory westward, your treatment of the slave population, the Japanese internment camps during World War II and finally Abu Ghraib, it’s tough for you to lecture others. America believed it could dictate foreign policy for the rest of the world because of its economic and military strength. That is no longer true. That’s also part of entering the new era. Asia is much more important now and China, India, Russia and ultimately Brazil are going to want to exercise their influence. The sun is setting in the west and rising elsewhere.

The countries with the fastest growth are where the opportunities are, so that’s where I’m investing in equities. You can make money in the United States and Europe, but you can probably do better in the BRICs even though their markets have recovered. We haven’t yet seen a decoupling between the major industrialized stock markets and the emerging markets. The volatility in New York has been exported everywhere making investors apprehensive. If, on the next down wave, China and India decline less and rise sooner, the decoupling will be confirmed. I think the price of oil will continue to rise but it may not go much beyond $70. At that level the Middle East countries will have enough money for their internal needs and yet the price won’t be so high that it will inspire a major alternative energy effort. I am very bullish on gold. In the reflationary world I see developing, the price of gold has to rise. Major industrialized countries will suffer weakening currencies and that will drive the trade surplus countries to buy more gold. I know you have a target of $1,200. I can see that being realized sometime this year or next but ultimately the price will get to $1,800 or even higher. The dollar may not weaken too much because Europe and Japan are in bad shape also and who wants to own their currencies? If you want to have some paper money, buy Swiss francs. I cannot understand the rise in the Japanese stock market because it is my understanding that nothing good is really happening in the domestic economy there. It may be a reflection that the recovery in China is real and Japan is a beneficiary. I think the meeting of the BRIC countries in Siberia was a significant event. They talked about using a basket of currencies in which the dollar was still dominant but gold was a component. The rising standard of living in the BRIC countries will also increase demand for gold. It is underrepresented in all global institutional portfolios and it can also serve as an inflation hedge.

Taking a look at some of the larger issues, your President Obama is certainly an improvement on the second Bush, but he is not the hero abroad that he appears to be in the U.S. His most important recent speech was in Cairo. There he reached out convincingly to the Muslim population everywhere and the response was positive. No Western head of state has ever been able to do that. Considering the number of Muslims in the world today and their growing influence, he has started to build a critical bridge. Fear is a factor on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe will have a slower growth rate going forward than the U.S., but no inflation. The European Central Bank will have to lower rates to stimulate economies there. In Europe they are worried about excess stimulus creating Weimar-like inflation. This is driving Germany toward Russia because they believe Russia’s growth can fuel German prosperity. In the U.S., there is a sense that your children won’t have the same opportunities you had and that’s discouraging spending.

I think this is a fantastic time to be a macro investor. You don’t even have to be a stock picker any more. You can have a concept of what is going to work and there is an Exchange Traded Fund out there for you to implement your idea. There are 1,400 of them, every conceivable permutation of an investment idea. Once again asset allocation is the key. It’s much more important than individual stock selection. My biggest worry is that Western leaders are too defensive psychologically. They are not sure what to do and whether what they’re doing will work. That’s part of the reason they haven’t done enough. The Chinese and Indians know they have to invest in infrastructure. Eventually the Chinese consumer will start to spend more and save less. That’s when that economy will really take off.

There is a bright future out there for hedge funds, but it will take time to develop. All kinds will flourish: long/short, macro, natural resources and credit. Long-only funds will have a tougher time. Creative investors will also make money in Egypt, Morocco and South Africa, although it’s hard to put big money there. Since March the investment environment has been evolving as I believe it should. The BRIC markets are doing well, the dollar is weak, U.S. equities are strong and gold is making new highs. So I’ve taken off my raincoat and I’ve stored my overcoat and I’ve rolled up my sleeves, because I am starting to make some serious money again.

Making Sense of the AdMob Acquisition

2009-11-10T15:09:00.004+02:00

With Congratulations to the AdMob team, Sequoia and Accel, since yesterday, I have been trying to make sense of the price tag on Google's acquisition of AdMob. $750MM is an eye-popping number for a company at that stage that is probably still losing money.

This morning the nickel dropped.

Google is repeating the same strategy in mobile that gave it dominance in the search ad business. It is buying distribution relationships with mobile publishers at a loss in same way it bought search and Adsense distribution on the web. Big payouts to AOL, MySpace, ASK and others brought liquidity to their ad marketplace and a large volume of searches that led to dominance in the search and text ad business. On the web, Google bought the network of publishers with ad sharing revenue. They bought the big ones by using their balance sheet to conclude whopping business development deals and they bought the small ones through automated web sign up and simplicity

When it came to Mobile, Google may have faced a dilemma. There are not one or two whopping business development deals that can move the needle and automated sign up is still challenging. Therefore, they concluded that the best way to jump start a network of mobile publishers is to buy it which is what they did with Admob. Time will tell if the same strategy that worked on the web will work on Mobile.

This points to a bigger trend: As the web fragments (which it is doing at an accelerated pace partially because of Google search), value is moving to those who own and maintain distribution. Distribution comes in three forms on the web and mobile: A high traffic home page like Yahoo, Facebook and Google; a deep vertical site like Edmunds or Zillow (Full Disclosure: Benchmark investment) or A NETWORK OF PUBLISHERS. The tail is increasingly valuable from a distribution perspective and there are not many companies that can boast a network of publishers for either content distribution or social purposes. Admob had such a nework in Mobile but the number of independent web networks is small. I have had a first hand look at the value of the Network of Publishers through our investments in Gigya and Conduit. Gigya has recently announced that it crossed 2500 publishers on its Gigya Socialize network. Another portfolio company, Conduit, has over 200,000 publishers on its very large Network of Publishers. Conduit's publishers such as MLB, Greenpeace and, my personal favorite, www.buysellcows.com have over 60,000,000 combined users that can also help each other through the Conduit Marketplace. When the network works, it is very powerful for all involved.

What is interesting is that Facebook gets this which is why it is pursuing Facebook Connect. Google gets this which is why it bought AdMob, developed adsense etc., Twitter has this through its open strategy. However, Microsoft and Yahoo do not seem to playing in this game for some reason.

Jason Calcannis had an interesting blog post on how Bing can take 10 points of market share from Google in 6 months.

Essentially, I put forth a simple strategy for Microsoft to pursue with Bing in which they would go to content providers like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal and offer them 50% more revenue then they are currently getting from Google search referrals to be exclusively indexed in Bing.

Here is another approach: Microsoft can buy a network of publishers or a number of them. They need this reach out onto the long tail of the web to get their brand in front of others and to get liquidity.

Finally! I Agree With Tom Friedman! Stop Trying to Microwave the Peace Process

2009-11-08T09:58:00.002+02:00

Tom Friedman has a great op/ed in the NY Times. He nails it and here is the crux:

"Administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home.
Right now we want it more than the parties. They all have other priorities today. And by constantly injecting ourselves we’ve become their Novocain. We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening. “Look, the U.S. secretary of state is here. Look, she’s standing by my side. Look, I’m doing something important! Take our picture. Put it on the news. We’re on the verge of something really big and I am indispensable to it.” This enables the respective leaders to continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price.
Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”
Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

Yup. That is right. The more lights that are focused on this problem, the less likely it is to succeed. The more pressure we put on the sides, the more they pander to the extremes so as not to be seen as caving. This is the dynamic of the Middle East. This has been the problem for a while but bored diplomats, avoiding their own internal problems, have found it convenient to focus on the headline grabbing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, possibly as a short cut to the Nobel Peace Prize! As I have written before, there seems to be endless pressure to Microwave Peace. However,

"Peace works when everyone comes in the right frame of mind to end conflict entirely. It is a process that is based on building trust between leaders and trust between peoples. That trust is built by fulfilling past agreements to the letter and not moving on when the situation changes and agreements are inconvenient. When leaders take their commitments seriously, so do do everyday citizens and that builds trust. It is true in business, it is true in friendship and it is true in diplomacy.

You cannot microwave peace. It does not happen overnight or because two leaders decide to make peace. Peace comes when a people, a nation, wants to focus on building its own society instead of destroying another's. It comes when citizens have jobs and a decent living and are striving for a better education and a better society. Peace requires a bold change of mind and heart at all levels of society in order for it to be stable. Nuclear saber rattling, rocketeering, and educational incitement are not conducive to bilateral peace nor regional stability. No Annapolis microwave will change that. But, over time, we can and we will."

President Obama and the Quartet should stop looking for quick microwaved solutions and should instead let history take its course in the MIddle East. For those familiar with the Bible in the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings you will note that the prophets note a few times that the "land was quiet (free of wars) for 40 years." That was the aberration and not the rule. Let us patiently wait for coming of of the peaceful vineyard and fig tree where the swords will turn to ploughshares.

רוח חדשה בארגון המורים היא חיונות לחינוך ילדינו

2009-11-05T13:34:00.003+02:00

כל הכבוד לדודי, שמולי וינקי מרוח חדשה בארגון המורים. המאבק שלהם הוא המאבק שלנו לעתיד חינוכי טוב יותר. רן ארז לא יעצור אותם: לא באיומים ולא בבריונות כי המהפכה החברתית חינוכית התחילה באותו לילה בסמינר הקיבוצים.

תצפו בסרט ותתמכו. זה חשוב לכולנו.

As Chairman of a School Board, This Video is Priceless and Hilarious

2009-11-05T11:06:00.001+02:00

Wow! The New Yorker and Cass R. Sunstein of the White House Picked Up on My Meme from 2005!

2009-11-02T15:40:00.003+02:00

The internet/twitter is abuzz this week about an article in the New Yorker suggesting that the internet and RSS breeds narrow-mindedness.

A legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein, according to the New Yorker (full article here), now head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and prolific author has proffered the following:

But, in Sunstein’s view, the Web has a feature that is even more salient: at the same time that it makes more news available, it also makes more news avoidable.
“The most striking power provided by emerging technologies,” he has written, is the “growing power of consumers to ‘filter’ what they see.” Many of the most popular Web sites are still those belonging to the major news channels and papers—CNN, the BBC, the New York Times. Increasingly, though, people are getting information from these sites in a customized form, by subscribing to e-mails and RSS feeds on their favorite topics and skipping subjects they find less congenial. Meanwhile, some of the fastest-growing sites are those which explicitly cater to their users’ ideologies. Left-leaning readers know, for example, that if they go to the Huffington Post or to AlterNet they will find stories that support their view of the world. Right-leaning readers know to go to the Drudge Report or to Newsmax to find stories that fit their preconceptions.
And what holds true for the news sites is even more so for the blogosphere, where it’s possible to spend hours surfing without ever entering new waters. Conservative blogs like Power Line almost always direct visitors to other conservative blogs, like No Left Turns, while liberal blogs like Daily Kos guide them to others that are also liberal, like Firedoglake. A study of the twenty most-visited blogs in each camp in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election found that more than eighty-five per cent of their links were to other blogs with similar politics. When the study’s authors charted the links in graphic form, they came up with a picture of non-interaction—a dense scribble on one side, a dense scribble on the other, and only the thinnest strands connecting the two. In 2006, Sunstein performed his own study of fifty political sites. He found that more than four-fifths linked to like-minded sites but only a third linked to sites with an opposing viewpoint. Moreover, many of the links to the opposing side’s sites were offered only to illustrate how “dangerous, dumb, or contemptible the views of the adversary really are.”
“I do not mean to deny the obvious fact that any system that allows for freedom of choice will create some balkanization of opinion,” Sunstein writes, in “Republic.com 2.0.” “Long before the advent of the Internet, and in an era of a handful of television stations, people made self-conscious choices among newspapers and radio stations.” But, he argues, Web culture takes choice to a new level.

Here is an excerpt of my post from 2005 entitled "Will RSS Undermine Tolerance?"

When I attended college, I purposely took a liberal arts route. Although, I knew I would end up in some form of business, I did not want to major in economics or go to the undergraduate business school. My rationale was that college was a place to expand my horizons, see and hear other points of view and learn about different and interesting topics.

As people leave university, settle into jobs, communities and opinions, we interact with other viewpoints in the workplace and by reading newspapers. While I do not believe that newspapers are objective despite their claims (every news editor and writer has his own biases which seep in), newspapers still include a reasonably wide variety of materials and some variety of opinions.

Today, more people are getting their news and opinions online. Initially, this came from online newspapers that were reaosnably similar to the written newspapers and varied in thier content. Now people are interacting more with blogs. Going and finding blogs that are interesting still forced one into contact with information and opinions that are not their own nor in thier comfort zone. This, one would hope, still expands horizons and stretches the mind.

However, RSS takes this one step further, a step that I fear may lead to self-reinforcing narrow-mindedness. I subscribe to RSS feeds, lots of them. They are very helpful for busy people. But as busy people (in an increasingly utilitarian world), we only subscribe to a feed/blog that really interests us or matches our current interests and opinions. These myopic intellectual interactions may lead people to become further entrenched in thier beliefs, having found sufficient like-minded content to keep them busy and close them off from other opinions. I am worried that personalized subscription will lead to even less tolerance than we have today.

Too bad I do not write books like Sunstein, but maybe I can get a job in the Israeli Prime Minister's office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Oh, I forgot, we don't have one.

Job Opportunity: Seeking Alpha is Looking For An Editorial Administrator in Israel

2009-10-28T11:54:00.000+02:00

Seeking Alpha, a leading stock market website based in Israel and New York, would like to hire an Editorial Administrator for our Hertzelia office. The position is fulltime and reports to the Editor in Chief.

Requirements:

- Proven experience or strong aptitude for a demanding administrative role
- Extremely detail oriented
- Ability to handle multiple ongoing tasks in an efficient manner
- Native English speaker
- Strong computer skills: internet, word processing and some database experience preferred
- Outstanding communication skills - written and verbal; ability to serve as an effective liason between various teams
- Self-starter who doesn't require or desire constant supervision
- University degree from English-speaking nation preferred

If you're interested in the position, please send an email to contentjobs@seekingalpha.com <mailto:xxxx@seekingalpha.com> with the following:

- A brief description of your prior experience in administrative roles. If you have none, please state the reason you'd be interested in such a role.
- Why you are specifically interested in working with Seeking Alpha (no more than 2 paragraphs)?
- Your resume in English.
- References from prior relevant positions, including phone numbers.

Please note that we'll only be able to respond to relevant applicants.

What Obama Can Learn from the NFL and NBA about Salary Caps and Driving Innovation

2009-10-20T19:09:00.002+02:00

For almost a year now, Washington has been abuzz about compensation caps for Wall Street executives. I can give a long litany of reasons why I think that is a bad idea that creates disincentives for recruiting great people to run these companies at their greatest time of need. As I have written in the past, America (and my home country of Israel for that matter) needs to invest in innovation. Interestingly, salary caps may be a way to spur brainpower into innovation. However, it is an inversion of the populist approach to salary caps currently in vogue.

President Obama's administration could learn a lot about salary caps from the NBA and NFL and in the process can help America turn on the innovation engine that America really needs to climb out of this deep recession. You see, the place to enforce Wall Street salary caps is not on executives but on fresh college grads and MBAs like the NFL does on rookies. This helps spread the talent wealth in the NFL and NBA in a way that it is not currently allocated in American industry.

The fat paychecks that Wall Street was and is able to pay the best and the brightest college grads from MBAs, to mathematics majors and engineers has pushed that brainpower from technological, business and medical innovation to financial engineering. Analyst salaries at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are able to attract the best and the brightest away from pursuing engineering or energy jobs where the brainpower could develop alternative energy sources, more sustainable agriculture and faster telecommunications and not just the next complex derivative. Imagine if all of Americas best brains and management talent were focused on innovation and not financial engineering or lawyering.

The best way to do this is an investment of resources and disincentives to shift brainpower into productivity and ingenuity. The stick is an NBA-style salary cap for rookies so they do not get into the financial system coupled with an investment in PhD and post doc research grants. If ingenuity jobs will pay better than financial engineering it is obvious that most bright grads would prefer innovation over all-nighters preparing boring pitch books and number crunching for bankers.

It is not Jerry Maguire-esque but it is a good way to stack the incentive system to focus on innovation.

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu About Forcing Hard Decisions

2009-10-01T10:51:00.003+02:00

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Shana Tova. First, I would like to commend you on your superb speech at the United Nations. In general, you have done a good job running our country in your first 6+ months from the 2 year budget to the stable coalition. You have jumped on the swine flu threat with alacrity and put Iran on firm notice. You have steadfastly stood up to President Obama's demands on settlements and correctly pointed out that we should make our own decisions and not be forced by a US President. Congratulations.

Therefore, I was struck by your recent decision to ask for a 2 billion NIS reduction in all the current government ministries to finance the swine flu vaccines and secret military needs. I do not object to the budget cut. I think that is called fiscal responsibility which is in short supply in the world today. What I object to is the broad cut. A 2% reduction in spending across all ministries is running away from tough decisions and tough politics.

On a smaller scale, but very similarly, board members at start ups force budget cuts in tough times. However, we do not turn to the CEO and say cut 10% in R&D, Sales and Marketing and GA. We look at where we can afford to cut and where we need to invest and make deeper cuts in some and no cuts in others. No everyone is happy but that is what needs to be done and that is what you need to do.

We cannot cut any more in education. We need to invest more there. Gideon Saar is right. We cannot cut more in infrastructure spending, job retraining or R&D spending because we will not be competitive globally. We need to invest in creating jobs because unemployment erodes societal solidarity and I do not see your ministries working hard to create these jobs yet. We cannot cut police spending because the crime here is intolerbale. So we, no you, need to make hard decisions that will be unpopular with some of your colaition partners.

We do not have money for subsidies for people who choose not to work, nor for the child allowances you reinstated. I wish we did. But we do not. People need to have families that they can afford to pay for. That is very Jewish. I am a big fan of an increased Jewish birthrate and believe everyone should have more children but the government does not have money to pay for that. We do not have money for more bypass roads in Yehuda and Shomron. The Smol Haleumi is right on this point. It hurts, but we do not have the money. Communities need to start paying for religious services like communities in the diaspora do. Sorry Minister Margi. The government does not have money for it. By the way, what does not Science Ministry that Minister Hershkowitz runs do anyway?

We need hard decisions. We need deep cuts in some ministries and services and no cuts in others. We need your proposed investment in railroads. We need a deep investment in broadband infrastructure and we needa huge investment in education and defense. We need to prioritize. We need to ask the question of one more F15 vs. 1000 more teachers. We need to ask the question of one more road in Yehuda and Shomron vs. smaller classrooms and a national railroad system. We need to talk about this clearly and not waver or hide behind broad cuts. It is time for hard decisions. Recessions tend to force this focus. Let's use it.

Thanks for listening and Chag Sameach
Michael

Good Thing Jeter and Mariano aren't Jewish

2009-09-02T09:48:00.001+03:00

Major League Baseball and ESPN <http://www.nypost.com/topics/topic.php?t=ESPN> must be atone deaf.
The Yankees' Sept. 27 home game against the Boston Red Sox <http://www.nypost.com/topics/topic.php?t=Boston_Red%20Sox> has been rescheduled from 1 to 8 p.m. -- putting the first pitch well after the sundown start of Yom Kippur.
The move forces observant Jewish fans to miss the game or risk having a lot more to atone for next Yom Kippur.
"Baseball switched the time because ESPN selected the game," a spokeswoman for the Yankees told The Post. "We were upset by it, but we have no control."

(hat tip: Brother Noam and NYPOST)

Derek Jeter and the Real Time Web

2009-08-18T10:34:00.003+03:00

There I was sitting in my office in Herzliya Israel this morning. Somebody told me that Michael Arrington posted and interesting link on Facebook so I went to check my News Feed first thing when I arrived. As I logged in I saw that 2 minutes earlier my good friend and ePinions (shopping.com) founder Nirav Tolia updated that he was sitting next to Derek Jeter and other of my beloved Yankees in the lobby of the St. Regis in San Francisco. In realtime, from my desk in Israel I asked him to go over and get my kids an autograph. See below for full conversation. Incredible use of the real time web!

PS: Nirav Updates me that the fearless @sarahleary (who is a Red Sox fan) actually asked Jete for the autograph. Thanks Sarah!

Stanley Fisher is Doing an Incredible Job Managing the Shekel/Dollar Exchange Rate

2009-08-10T16:18:00.003+03:00

My headline above says it all. Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, who directed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's PhD thesis, is showing the world that central bank governors have a thing or two to learn from the silver-haired Fisher.

He has handled this crisis with both a steady hand and a wily strategy, in which he has kept speculative traders guessing. As I have written many times before, among the biggest risks to Israel's economy is the Shekel/Dollar exchange rate. I do not believe it is an objective problem. It is, however, a planning problem. When most businesses are budgeting for an exchange rate of 4:1 and the dollar weakens to much below that, both employment and exports are hurt in this export-dependent economy.

As the market keeps pushing the dollar down, Fisher has

propped it up through steady currency purchases. That gave confidence to exporters and businesses. When the shekel started rallying, Fisher announced that he would make some intermittent large purchases of dollars to prop up the dollar. Just that announcement sent the shekel down against the dollar and caused some speculators to panic. Today, Fisher announced that he would stop the daily purchases of $100MM dollars. In about one second, the Shekel rose against the dollar over 2%.

Fisher is keeping the speculators guessing so that they do not exaggerate the fall and ris

e in the exchange rate. At the end of the day, Fisher clearly understands that the market forces will prevail in the end. He is getting Israeli businesses used to a weaker dollar in stages so they can plan appropriately and delivering a stern message to currency speculators that they bet heavily on the shekel/dollar trade at their own risk.

Really Interesting Presentation on iPhone Penetration

2009-08-02T15:32:00.002+03:00

The below presentation is unbelievable (Hat Tip Jan Schultink). Truth is, we have seen the power of Apple at Tunewiki, (Benchmark company) who saw 3+X growth in 30 days from the moment it launched on the Appstore. This is pretty useful to keep in mind as the FCC investigates AAPL.

As I look at this market unfold, I cannot help but wonder if this will be a redux of the PC market where Apple innovated and led as long as the systems were vertically integrated (remember the great Apple II and the early Macintosh) but then were soundly beaten when the industry moved to open systems (if that is what Microsoft's Windows Monopoly can be called). So far, cell phones or Mobile Internet Devices (remeber WinTel?) are in the early stages of market development so vertical integration of the hardware, software and applications (read Appstore) is a winning strategy. It will be interesting to see what happens as this market begins to mature, hardware standardization sets in and more manufacturers get up to speed on the handset game and an "windows-like" OS emerges for the cell phone.

I am sure this is what Google is betting on with Android.

Kleiner Perkins iFund Presentation at iPhoneDevCamp 3

View more documents from Raven Zachary.

Mazal Tov - New FaceBook Times

2009-08-02T14:57:00.002+03:00

With much gratitude to השם, Yaffa and I (actually, Yaffa did all the work) gave birth to a baby girl on Shabbat morning at 8:50AM. Mother and daughter are doing well, thank God.

All peanut gallery comments on the blog's name or suggestions for a new name are welcome in the comments section. The blog is now officially on a short paternity leave. Most of you left them on the post the last time I had a baby.

As a sign of the times, the last time we had a baby i posted first to the blog. This time, to twitter and Facebook (pictures there)

In any form, may we all share many simchas and happy occasions

Every Entrepreneur Should Watch This Jeff Bezos Video

2009-07-23T08:41:00.002+03:00

Bezos is incredible. It is no wonder Amazon is so successful. If you are an entrepreneur, watch and learn. This is the ABCs of entrepreneurship and building a great company. (Video is from yesterday on occasion of Amazon buying Zappos)

Tunewiki is now Being Featured in the iPhone Appstore

2009-07-22T11:31:00.003+03:00

Tunewiki (full disclosure: Benchmark company) is now being featured in the iPhone Appstore and is rising through the ranks of free music apps. It is currently #4. You can get the Tunewiki app here.

Elie Wiesel on Rashi

2009-07-20T10:28:00.002+03:00

This is a great 2 minute video from famous author, ethicist and Jewish Hero Elie Wiesel on Rashi, the greatest exegete of the last 1000 years. It is part of the publication of Wiesel's book on Rashi from Nextbook press.

Rashi by Elie Wiesel from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Tunewiki Breaks Into Top 10 Free iPhone Music Apps on Day 1

2009-07-13T23:12:00.005+03:00

Congrats again to Rani, Amnon, Chad, Jared and team Tunewiki for an amazing iPhone app launch. Just days after taking the #1 overall spot in Blackberry's Appworld in the first week since launch of their Blackberry app, Tunewiki launched its iPhone app and on day 1 of launch Tunewiki has broken into the top 10 free music apps on iPhone (see screenshot below). Tunewiki is also getting quite the buzz and positive response on Twitter Search. Here is the Gizmodo review from today. Go team (Full Disclosure:Tunewiki is a Benchmark investment)!

Tunewiki Is the #1 App in Blackberry AppWorld

2009-07-12T08:15:00.009+03:00

Kudos to portfolio company Tunewiki (Rani, Amnon, Chad, Jared and Team) who reached #1 on the Blackberry Appworld chart yesterday.

Tunewiki is really one of the best examples I have run into of the realtime, ubiquitous web.

You can check out the website, with its Geography-filtered REAL-TIME music maps and top 50 charts as well as the addictive REALTIME feed of who is listening to what, where and on what device (see screen shot below)! The instant translation of LEGAL music lyrics is a big hit internationally and the fact that you can access the same experience in multiple places, mobile, web and Twitter (check out the people tweeting out what they are listening to) is what makes it ubiquitous.

If you are a music lover, eager to discover music and watch the trends and learn lyrics, you have to try Tunewiki. If you have a blackberry or an Android phone, you can download the app. Hopefully it will soon arrive in the iPhone Appstore. In the meantime, Windows Media Player users can also get the app for their PC.

For more reviews on various tunewiki apps, check out these

Gizmodo on Tunwiki for Android

Cnet Reviews on Tunewiki App + Streaming Radio

Crackberry on Tunewiki for Blackberry

Blog coverage of Tunewiki

While on the topic of music sites and apps, I see that SAI is reporting the Greylock's David Sze led a $35MM round for Pandora after they got their royalty agreement straightened out.

Michael Jackson Killed the Iranian Revolution

2009-07-06T02:55:00.002+03:00

For over a week the people of Iran captured the imagination of the world, tweeting, youtube-ing and texting their way to international support. Despite the best efforts of the Mullahs, Ayatolla Khameni and "President" Ahmandinejad, who cut the internet lines and jammed cell phone, the green people revolution marched on. The Iranian oppressors were on the run, or so it seemed, even though western leaders such as President Obama, did little to support the Iranian people. Civilians around the world set up proxy servers, retweeted information from Iran, and spread YouTube videos of Neda and others. in fact #iranelection and other variants of it, occupied the top 3-4 spots in the Twitter top 10 for over a week.

That was, until Michael Jackson died. The 50 year old Pedophile, with the plastic face and unauthentic hair knocked the real people of Iran off the top 4 spots on twitter within hours of his death. Instead of retweeting the heroism of the people of Iran, they were speculating on the reasons for Jackson's "untimely" death. His death propelled his songs to the top of the download charts and and moved Neda's death down the charts. The Pedophile overtook the student revolution and the world's attention to the events in Iran waned. 1.6 million people signed up for the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center tomorrow but only a small fraction of that number turned up to support rallies for the Iranian people. The contrast and the irony is too great. Even today, Michael Jackson is in spot #4 and #iranelection is number 8. The people of the world have lost interest in Iran and Jackson continues to grab headlines.

We have a problem. If our attention and that of the news media can be swayed from earth shattering events and real people, fighting real oppression with the ease that Michael Jackson swayed it, we have a problem. If we are riveted by a miscreant pedophile, who lived extravagantly and ran away from reality, then we have lost our moral compass. Twitter is a pretty accurate reflection of what people are thinking and CNN is a reflection of what media people are thinking. Jackson is ahead of Iran on Twitter and the top story on CNN today was Jackson's memorial. We have a problem.

Do We Really Make Our Own Decisions?

2009-06-25T10:21:00.003+03:00

Koby at Seeking Alpha forwarded me this fascinating video of Dan Ariely's talk at the TED conference this year. I highly recommend watching it.

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange

2009-06-24T17:06:00.004+03:00

Esther Levanon, CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, gave the below interview on CNBC this morning. A few comments:

1. If Israel wants to attract serious foreign investment and liquidity to the TASE, it needs to get the liquidity up in the big companies and that means loosening the grip of the "Tycoons" on the big companies. We need a carrot approach that gives tax relief to tightly controlled companies to sell their stock to the public. This would also help retire a lot of the debt they have on the books.

2. Getting more liquidity on the TASE and the deal with the NYSE could possibly help Israel's tech companies raise later stage funding for which there is a severe shortage in Israel. We need local liquidity options to jump start that funding base.

3. While Mrs. Levanon has done a much better job than any of her predecessors in getting the word out on Israeli financial markets and in expanding their global reach (I have now seen her twice on CNBC and interviews in the written press), we need to get her some help and training in English. Like many Israeli spokesman from the Foreign Ministry down, Press training and English Language skills are sorely lacking.

You can see some of my stocktalks and posts on Israeli companies on my page on Seeking Alpha